Trying to Resolve

Ani Difranco has a very catchy song called “Evolve”, from her 2003 album of the same name. The chorus of it is “she’s trying to evolve.” Consider this title a riff on that.

I’ve kinda always been big on resolutions, on New Year’s Day and otherwise. New school year, new city, what have you. It’s an opportunity to start over, start fresh, and make the most of whatever. It’s a blank slate. I fancy myself a success-oriented person. I cannot stop. It’s not a good thing, often times. When I have downtime, I get bored, I get anxious. The past two weeks, we were travelling to our families, first in London and then in Ottawa. There was simply not enough for me to do. I went stark mad. Resolutions are a special sort of hell when you are the type of person who overextends themselves a lot and finds themselves planning trips three and a half years in advance.*

So, I’m trying to resolve. I can’t seem to come up with remarkable resolutions that I’ll actually LOVE, though. Maybe to knit more? Goals? Goals, I can handle.

Fiscal cliffs: Be austere this year. (That part about planning a trip three years ahead of time? If it’s anything like I’m envisioning it, it’s going to need some savings.)

Forge my career path: Do more amazing things in my field of expertise with my knowledge and skills, both for pay and for experience. And for the sheer joy of it.

Relatedly, this seems like an opportune time to let you know (all three of you that are still hangin’ in there!) that I’m planning on blogging more often, but far less about food. I think I’ve been letting you know this for the past seven months, so I should probably act on this. That middle part about the crazy trip will probably come up at some point, among other things.

*This is apparently what I do on vacation, when left to my own devices and when none of those devices are particularly helpful in the research work that I should be doing.